As you may or may not remember, before Christmas we were following one of these TV show/competitions to find the "best" choir in Catalonia. Our local group put on a good show but unfortunately got eliminated in an early round - but we kept watching the show week in week out. I've never been much of a fan of gospel or church music but these were choirs for the modern age, churning out pop, rock, folk songs and doing a bl**dy good job of it. Anyway, we really liked this group and actually got to see them sing live in a local concert over the Christmas holidays ...

dimarts, 11 de febrer de 2014

Legend has it that you are allowed to break the Golden Rule of "Don't re-post the same old songs on your blog" when it's your birthday. So, happy birthday to me and today I'll repeat one of my fave tunes. I don't have just one favourite song, but there are a few which go round and round my "top 20" for different reasons - usually a mixture of bringing back great memories plus having everything I like in a decent ditty (in this case, simple understandable lyrics, great chorus to hum along to, trumpets, violins, children's choirs, a certain touch of strangeness and/or originality ...).

To blog or to work, that seems to be the question. All this "return to work" lark has its pros and contras, one of the downsides is that suddenly your days become a rat-race. Not that it's just work filling up my time of course (I didn't choose my life/job here to be stuck in a 9-5 stress bucket), but between teaching and translating, and living - theatre (more later), writing about apple snails (more later), being with the family, a good book (more later), searching out great music, seeing one doctor after another, and "investing" time doing nothing really productive on the internet - I'm finding it hard to find the "quiet hours" in a day which I need to write a half-decent post (and I've got a least 20 written down in a "to blog" list!). But, that's life folks.